Sunday, January 17, 2010

16 January 2010 -- Escape


Discouraged by the flagrant waste and mis-direction of expensive aid resources, we decided to help evacuate Alex Deprez's 12-year-old daughter, Angi, and her present guardian, Nancy, to the Dominican Republic, where they will board a plane for Washington DC. Early in the morning, we siphoned diesel out of the generator fuel tank and filled Tim's truck. Then we drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince wondering why we saw no aid vehicles, but relieved that the Haitians seemed to have returned to normal life. The only thing missing was the school children in uniform, and for some reason, there were not as many beggars as usual. Haiti will probably survive the actual earthquake better than they will survive the brewing aid disaster. The trip to Santo Domingo was easy. The border was crowded with aid vehicles and foreign troops, but we drove right through without stopping. Normally the Dominican officials want money, maybe since they cannot accept bribes now, they are too lazy to even check passports. Halfway to Santo Domingo, Tim stopped and bought some jugs of wine made by local nuns. In Santo Domingo, Nancy had her hair done, while I replaced the upper radiator hose on Tim's truck and Tim recruited an Anthropology student to return to Haiti with him.

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